Tasting Life Twice
Archive for the category “Family Matters”
Birthday Girl!
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Yesterday was Elizabeth’s birthday. In her honor, last night I reread some of Shel Silverstein’s poems, including a couple of Elly’s favorites. Here are a couple of ones we especially like. The first is “Whatif” from A Light in the Attic and the second is “Spaghetti” from Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Whatif
Last night while I lay thinking here,
Some whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old whatif song:
Whatif I’m dumb in school?
Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there’s poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won’t bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems swell, and then
The nighttime whatifs strike again!
Spaghetti
Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place,
Up to my elbows—up to my face,
Over the carpet and under the chairs,
Into the hammock and wound round the stairs,
Filling the bathtub and covering the desk,
Making the sofa a mad mushy mess.
The party is ruined, I’m terribly worried,
The guests have all left (unless they’re all buried).
I told them, “Bring presents.” I said, “Throw confetti.”
I guess they heard wrong
‘Cause they all threw spaghetti!
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Faded Memories
Every so often you hear about a newly discovered photograph of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis or some other deceased celebrity. Or, a mysterious person in a photograph is finally identified, as happened recently with an iconic photograph of a famous kiss and an “American Girl in Italy.” I found a roll of film a few months ago that, for me, ranks right up there with those other valuable images.
Originally, this roll of film was in a camera bag I hadn’t used for a number of years. Over the years, it appeared in a few other places (glove compartment, kitchen drawer, etc.). A remnant of the film era, and perhaps the last roll I shot before going to a digital camera, the Kodak film sat around waiting its time. That time finally came. A few weeks ago I took in the mysterious film to Sam’s Club and had the pictures developed. With so much time having passed, I had no idea what to expect. Imagine my surprise when I got the pictures back and saw photos of the children, including my late son Jonathan, on the occasion of Elizabeth’s 4th birthday. The pictures were taken eight years ago and the film was exposed, so the photographs have a slightly washed out, retro look. But even with the faded quality of the prints, the memories are priceless. Here are a few from the collection.
The Greatest Brochure Ever Made
In the past few weeks, while sorting through some files, I came across the best advertising brochure I’ve ever seen.
When I was in graduate school in Vancouver, British Columbia, our family was spending an afternoon in Bellingham, Washington. While at Kinko’s making some copies, we noticed a young lady staring at us. Soon after, she came up to us and said, “I have to have that baby.” That baby was Anna, our youngest at the time. The woman seemed unthreatening so we didn’t fear an abduction. And in fact, she had good news. She asked us, “Can I have that baby for a photo shoot?” She went on to explain that she worked for a company that was producing a new brochure for a medical association. And get this, she would pay us $40 an hour to photograph our baby! To a poor grad student, that sounded like a good deal. (Side note: I tried to get Anna to blink in every photo so we could stretch this out for a couple of days.)
Thus began Anna’s modeling career. In diapers, front and center, advertising healthy choices for a medical association. Today, that baby is a beautiful young lady beginning her junior year of high school.
Lucky Enough at Hilton Head
Ah, Hilton Head! What a place. We stayed at Sea Pines Plantation and there was a sign on the poolside bar which said, “If you’re lucky enough to be at the beach, you’re lucky enough.” We were lucky last week. Live music everywhere you go. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Islanders who were relaxed and interesting in conversation. There was a medley of songs running through my head. With Jimmy Buffett, I was looking for my “lost shaker of salt”. With Zac Brown I had my “toes in the water, my ass in the sand”. With Brad Paisley we drove until the “map turned blue” and there I confessed my “love affair with water’. With Kenny Chesney, it was a time for the beachcombers to “let the warm air melt these blues away”. On more than one occasion, I thought I was in one of those Corona beer commercials with our lounge chairs looking out into the great blue yonder.
Two of the days we arose early to watch the sunrise. One of those days, we ate dinner facing the other direction, watching the sun go down at Skull Creek Boathouse while listening to live reggae music. Late one evening, dad and I walked the beach at dark. Looking up a nighttime sky exploding with stars, I downloaded the SkyView app for my phone and we were able to name the stars and constellations.
I almost didn’t make it home, not only because I’m smitten with ocean life, but also because we had to fetch the rental keys out of a storm drain. You see, my brother threw me the keys to the rental car late one night after dinner. He said, “you drive.” Did I mention that he threw them? And did I tell you it was nighttime? He sort of led me with a high pop fly, like when we were boys playing the baseball game of 500. And because the keys were out of my reach and because the keys did not glow in the dark like a lightning bug, I couldn’t see them. And those keys, our ticket home, fell on the top of a storm drain near the car. And before we could get them in hand, they slid between the grates and down below into the underworld, the place of the dead.
You should have seen the look on our faces. With raised eyebrows, I looked at him. With hand over mouth, he looked at me. It was like the scene in A Christmas Story when young Ralphie is helping his father change a flat tire. Ralphie loses the lug nuts in the snow and his nightmare moves in slow motion while he expresses his horror at what is happening.
We lifted up the storm drain cover and looked for the bottom. It was about four feet deep, filled with water and debris and home to “where the wild things are”. Fortunately for us, my brother had a thin flashlight in his pocket. Unfortunately for me, on that particular night I was still taller than my brother. That meant I would have to fetch the keys if we were going to make it home. I did. With my brother holding the flashlight and laughing, I barely got the keys on a finger without having to rent scuba gear. He kindly offered to hold my feet. I kindly declined, certain I would end up in the ocean, feeding the fish. It was a late discovery we made but after checking out the status of our wet rental keys, (keyless entry still worked) it was then we noticed the replacement fee: $200. Had we lost them, we might have missed my niece’s wedding. We would have been lucky enough to have another day at the beach, however.
Mackenzie Getting Married
It was a lovely weekend in Hannibal as my niece, Mackenzie, got married, to Wyatt Miller. After the ceremony, we crossed the river to Kinderhook Lodge where we toasted the newlyweds, feasted on a sumptuous spread and danced the night away. Wyatt and Mackenzie were presented a handmade quilt with memorable words and pictures from friends and family.
Grandma Winnie
Winnie Thompson (February 18, 1922 – June 23, 2011)
One of my earliest memories of my grandmother Winnie is of her sitting at her home in Belleville, Kansas. Though large in my memory, the house was actually quite small. Grandma would sit in her usual spot, at the dining room table, next to the memory box on the wall, positioned so she could look out the window toward the front yard. She would be drinking a glass of tea or enjoying a beer. There would always be a lot of people in the home and with lots of people, lots of noise. There was laughter and jokes, phones calls and storytelling, children getting scolded for any number of indiscretions, both minor and major, both real and imagined . And then there was grandma’s loud voice presiding over the creation and chaos, saying such things as “well, criminy” or “for crying out loud”.
But there was one moment in the day when everyone in the house was ordered to be quiet and a hushed reverence came upon all. And that was during the ten o’clock news when the weatherman delivered the forecast. Like a group of monks under orders to keep a vow of silence, we stopped what we were doing and listened to the weatherman describe the conditions outside and what we might reasonably expect in the coming days. I can still see the room full of adults turning their attention to the television and listening to this stranger tell us whether or not “something wicked this way comes.”
In later years, grandma continued to pay attention to the weather. Most of our conversations, in fact, started by reference to the weather. “Are you getting any storms down there?” and “what’s it doing out there?” and “are you getting a lot of rain?”
That’s not entirely surprising. Growing up in the great plains she knew that unfriendly weather could be deadly. She had heard the stories, made pilgrimage to the basement on numerous occasions. The ominous possibilities etched a place in the imagination of many a child growing up in “tornado alley”. Early on, we were trained to respond to sirens and find a safe place to hide until the storms had passed.
I asked my mother about this. I asked her if she had a tornado cellar growing up.
“Did we have a tornado cellar?” she repeated the question back to me. “We lived in it all summer long. We didn’t come out until fall or sometimes as late as groundhog day.”
May of 2010
We all Buzz for Ice Cream
Here in America’s middle-earth, we’ve been hearing the buzz from the plague of cicadas and trying to intercept their kamikaze flights into our airspace. The Hannibal Courier Post recently posted some pictures of these subterranean visitors who emerge in intervals of thirteen and seventeen years. The photo below is of my father, a retired conservationist (photos by Danny Henley). I’m going to suggest he start collecting more of them. A local ice cream shop here in Columbia, Sparky’s on 9th Street, has added cicadas to the menu. The cicadas are de-winged, boiled and dressed up with brown sugar and chocolate.
Kansas in Kodachrome
In the batch of my dad’s pictures that I converted from slides, there were also some pictures of my grandparents in Belleville, Kansas that were taken half a century ago. Grandpa Hoyt worked on the railroad and ran the Rock Island Line. He had the easy job. Grandma Hazel stayed at home and raised nine children, eight of them boys!
Travis Tamerius
A journal of reflections on things seen and unseen, wimsical and wise, ordinary and odd, magical and mundane-
